So Molly started holding up her right rear leg on Tuesday night. We thought, okay, probably a muscle strain from having too much at Yosemite last weekend. We did strict rest and gave her metacam; carried her down/up the stairs to the backyard and kept her on leash for potty trips. This morning, I notice swelling around the hock that I did not see over the previous days of checking her over so I called the vet asap while trying to control my panic.

Four x-rays were taken and all the bones along the stifle and hock look fine - no cracks and everything is seated where they should be. No shifting of the metal plate or any of the screws in her knee and no signs of early arthritis in any of the joints.

We're doing another week of strict rest, cold compresses, metacam and also got some tramadol to use as needed. Molly's surgeon does not work on Saturday's but he will be reviewing the x-rays when he gets in Monday and comparing them to the previous x-rays from her knee surgeries.

Our vet said that while it is rare, it could be a damaged tendon. Anyone else ever seen or experienced this? The swelling is centered around and below the hock and she refuses to bear weight on her leg.

Thank you all for the well wishes! She went back today for a visit with her surgeon (BF had to take the day off short notice but I could not get out of work deadlines) and he said her Achilles tendon is fine and no sign of any nerve issues. His recommendation is to treat it like a "sports injury" and up her tramadol (was half a pill every 12 hours - now it will be a full pill every 12 hours). Since the swelling is finally starting to go down and he cannot find any structural problems from reviewing the x-rays and palpitations, he wants to make sure she uses her foot/leg again as much as possible to avoid muscle atrophy in the leg which would cause more problems in the long run. So back to the sling and I'm going to see if some massage and passive stretching will help too.

He and the other vet did discuss risk of tick-borne illness but her risk factor is really low (had one tick several months ago that was on her for maybe an hour and was not fully engorged when we successfully removed it). He didn't seem to think it was necessary to explore that possibility at this point.

It's been a l o n g week and a half since the last update. Molly completed her 2-tramadol/day + strict rest a few days ago and finally started doing more toe tapping. Even while she was on tramadol, I could not do the full range of passive stretching as certain movements clearly caused her pain so I kept with massage. Around mid-week, she started offering more stretching on her own which was really great. This morning, she gave her "take me out for a walk!!!" roo roos – something we haven't heard for two weeks so we were sooo happy! It's still be going to be short walks for quite a while but just wanted to update that she's starting to put her foot all the way down and take several contiguous steps at a time with all four feet

Nugget just went in for rads for his hocks yesterday. No swelling, but his hock ligaments are so slack they constantly hyper-extend and cause him pain and make him non-weight bearing after more than a few minutes of running. When Molly's a little sounder, we should take our hock hobblers for a walk.